The point is what the training had really given me, which was not the move itself but the judgment around it, the ability to do the smallest necessary thing and not one degree more, to feel no urge toward cruelty even with a cruel man helpless in front of me, to keep my only goal in view, which was to make him stop and to keep him stopped until the people whose job it is could arrive.

Restraint is the whole of it.

The move is nothing.

The restraint is everything.

Chapter 21 — The Photograph

It took him several seconds to understand what had happened, that he was pinned face-down on the boards of my porch and could not move, and I felt the confusion in him before I felt the fear.

“Get off me!” he shouted, thrashing, and finding that thrashing accomplished nothing.

“Stay still,” I told him, in a low, even voice.